At about the time the London Linux Expo was ending, sixty KDE developers converged on Stuttgart, Germany for LinuxTag 2001. LinuxTag is the largest Linux and Open Source exhibition in Europe, drawing in 15,000 visitors and 110 exhibitors this year. Besides having a great time seeing each other in person again (or for the first time), the KDE developers greeted thousands of visitors to their booth and presented several talks and workshops. More details, and lots of shots from the event, are available below.

DATELINE JULY 11, 2001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

KDE Report: LinuxTag 2001

Sixty KDE Developers Converge on Stuttgart, Germany for LinuxTag 2001

July 8, 2001 (Stuttgart, Germany). More thansixty
KDE developers from all over the world
gathered at the KDE booth during LinuxTag 2001.
Among them were KDE developers from the United States, Austria,
the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Norway.
Special guest-star from the US wasNoatun-developerCharles Samuels,
who will probably release KJetLag (which consists of lots of sleep()
calls) soon after he returns to the US this week ;-).

On six TFT
equipped demopoints, KDE developers displayed the latest stable
version of the award-winning KDE desktop, theKOffice office suite and theKDevelop development IDE.
They also offered a preview ofKDE 2.2
Beta 1, KDevelop 3.0 pre-alpha (a/k/aGideon) andReaktivate. The latter
enables Konqueror, the KDE
web browser and file manager, to embedActiveX
controls, such as the popularShockwave
movies, for which to date no native Linux/Unix solution exists.
The well decorated and overcrowded 24 square meter KDE booth and its
crew enjoyed the feedback and interest of several thousand visitors,
among which remarkably many stopped by to talk to theKDE women team.

A considerable number of well known representatives of the Linux
community attended the KDE booth, including people fromProlinux,LinuxUser and LinuxMagazin,
and Tuomas Kuosmanen (a/k/a "TigerT").Rob
Malda (a/k/a CmdrTaco ofSlashdot fame), frequently
popped by the KDE booth and proudly displayed the latest KDE beta
on his laptop.

In addition, on Thursday Margareta
Wolf,
State Secretary of the German Federal Ministry of
Economics and Technology, expressed her interest when she
obtained information on current issues concerning Linux and the KDE
project, but also shared here concerns about pending patent legislation
in the EU and its potential impact on the development of Open Source
Software.

Several sets of photos from the event and the KDE booth are available:

and of course we'd like to thank the people who organized LinuxTag 2001.

About LinuxTag

LinuxTag is the largest Linux and Open Source exhibition in Europe.
This year 15,000 visitors and 110 exhibitors (among them more than 30
free software projects) attended. The event was hosted in Stuttgart,
Germany from July 5 through July 8.

About KDE

KDE is an independent, collaborative project by hundreds of developers
worldwide to create a sophisticated, customizable and stable desktop
environment employing a component-based, network-transparent architecture.
KDE is working proof of the power of the Open Source "Bazaar-style" software
development model to create first-rate technologies on par with
and superior to even the most complex commercial software.

Maybe there are good reasons to not do this, so I will keep it short, but here's the idea: Sell KDE Dragon T-shirts (or other loot) starting well in advance that say "LinuxTag KDE Support Crew" to help pay for otherwise unfunded / unfundable KDE developers to get there. Considering the number of student developers etc, it would be cool to be able to subsidize them so more could gather at once, increase the critical mass, etc. Even if this raised only a few hundred pounds / dollars / marks, it might buy a few train tickets from European cities at least.

I've got some more ideas, but I suggest that ideas for events go to the kde-events mailinglist so they will be read by the appropriate parties and will also be archived in the mailinglist archives - not that The Dot doesn't archive comments, but the mailinglist archives is where I'd look first.